Tutor profile: Paige C.

Many stories, from novel to screenplays to stage plays and even TV scripts, can be broken down into three acts. Between these acts is what is considered a "Turn." What point in a story should occur at the two turns? (Ex: act one - turn - act two - turn - act three).

The turn between act one and act two should be the point of no return. It is the point where everything changes and advancement must continue. It occurs usually just after the inciting incident. The turn between act two and act three is just before the climax. It is the point where the character (or characters) are at their absolute lowest point. Things are as bad as they can be, and hope seems lost.

Is cataloging a neutral act, why or why not, and if not - what should or can be done?

The answer is largely dependent on the person. But it is generally becoming more accepted that it is not a neutral act, as the act of cataloging relies heavily on the person who is doing the cataloging. By cataloging an item a person may be implicitly putting their biases in the organization of items - even in choosing to catalog an item in a particular language (such as translating a Spanish title into English and cataloging based on the English title). There is no true right answer right now for this aside from citing articles, and thinking critically about the roles of libraries in a community.

You can break apart some unknown words in English to help decipher their meaning. Using this information, can you use the roots of the word 'umbrella' to decipher it's literal meaning ?

"Umbrella" can be broken into two parts, umbra - which means 'shade' or 'shadow' coming from Latin, and 'ella' which means 'small.' While this is a small exercise, it can be helpful for learning how to break down larger more complicated words when the roots are known.